Stockton General Plan workshop to focus on transportation

Wednesday

Aug 27, 2014 at 9:00 PM

Roger PhillipsRecord Staff Writer

STOCKTON – On nearly a daily basis, Richard Valentine Schenck pedals his bicycle roughly 10 blocks to the Downtown Transit Center, boards the No. 40 RTD bus and sits back for his four-mile ride to the class he is taking at San Joaquin Delta College.

Schenck, a 58-year-old Stockton resident, does not own a car, though he says he is “working on it.” Instead of a car, he relies on his feet, his legs and public transportation to get around town.

The hairiest adventures in his travels, Schenck says, often are the result of automobile drivers who are intolerant toward the bike riders and pedestrians with whom they are supposed to share the roads.

“Sometimes, they can be a little angry,” Schenck said one morning this week as he waited downtown for his bus. “But if you watch them, you’re all right. Half of them don’t pay any attention.”

Better times, however, may be coming for Schenck and other Stockton residents who need or desire for the city to become a friendlier place to navigate without a motor vehicle.

The city is in the early stages of amending its outdated General Plan and is holding a series of monthly public workshops at which citizens are asked to share their ideas to improve Stockton in the years ahead.

Today’s workshop, at 6 p.m. at the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium, will focus on making the city a more navigable place for non-drivers. Steve Chase, the city’s community development director, said he is hoping for a large citizen turnout to assist in the ongoing efforts to plot Stockton’s future.

“How do we improve on what we have?” Chase said. “How do we start making connections between our marine waterways, our streets, walk-ability, and our desire to improve transit?”

The current General Plan, approved in 2007 and gazing 28 years into the future, reflected rampant growth and envisioned a city increasingly sprawling outward from downtown.

But seven years later, with Stockton more than two years into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the focus has shifted to improving downtown and the city’s older neighborhoods, particularly the south side.

Officials and close observers say transportation is an integral part of the equation. Making the city friendlier to walkers and cyclists would result in an array of benefits, they say.

If fewer people needed to use their cars to get around town, it would result in lower costs for maintaining roadways; reduce carbon emissions, allowing the city to meet government environmental regulations; and even, possibly, lower obesity rates. It also could be the catalyst for a more vibrant and business-friendly downtown.

“The trend has been planning for cars,” said Kari McNickle, one citizen who intends to be at tonight’s workshop. “Now the interest is in planning for people. We built our way into this. Can we plan our way out of it?”

McNickle’s interests in the topic are both personal and professional. In her job as a regional planner at the San Joaquin Council of Governments, her focus is on commuting issues. But she also serves on the board of the San Joaquin Bike Coalition, and McNickle frequently rides her bicycle from her home in north Stockton to her job downtown.

“Part of it’s health,” McNickle said of her decision to ride to work. “It’s a way to get my workout in pretty easily. But it’s also practicing what I preach in my work.”

The solutions for tying together the fragmented areas of Stockton need not be costly, an important consideration in a city still struggling to regain its financial footing after filing for bankruptcy in 2012.

David Garcia, who has a master’s degree in public policy and a keen interest in seeing a renewal of his hometown, said measures such as creating protected bike lanes, adding more stop signs and converting one-way streets into two-way streets are proven methods for “traffic calming.” He says they could be particularly beneficial to downtown Stockton.

“The priority should be to get more people out and hanging out downtown, not necessarily getting cars through there as fast as possible,” Garcia said.

The idea of adding more two-way streets may not be merely the dream of some of Stockton’s more tuned-in private citizens.

“Should we continue with these flagship one-way streets, Center and El Dorado, that fly us quickly across downtown to the Crosstown Freeway or to the Miracle Mile?” Chase asked.

The city’s General Plan work comes at a moment when Stockton also is updating its bicycle master plan, which was adopted in 2007. Last week, the state awarded $550,000 in federal grant money to the city to assist with the bike planning.

In July, the city’s first public General Plan workshop focused on neighborhoods and attracted a large turnout, though one not quite as young and diverse as Chase had hoped. Leading up to tonight’s event, Chase reiterated his desire to hear from a wider swath of the public.

“If it’s simply left to a small minority of engaged people of a certain age group or a certain economic group, it just won’t feel right,” he said. “This is a forum on how we are going to treat ourselves as a community. This is Ground Zero for remaking Stockton, and I don’t say that lightly.”

Contact reporter Roger Phillips at (209) 546-8299 or rphillips@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/phillipsblog and on Twitter @rphillipsblog.